'What part of the Past?'

'I may not tell you. If you will choose a time, I will take you
to the place that then held it. You yourselves must find it.'

'When did you see it last?' asked Anthea--'I mean, when was it
taken away from you?'

The beautiful voice answered--

'That was thousands of years ago. The Amulet was perfect then,
and lay in a shrine, the last of many shrines, and I worked
wonders. Then came strange men with strange weapons and
destroyed my shrine, and the Amulet they bore away with many
captives. But of these, one, my priest, knew the word of power,
and spoke it for me, so that the Amulet became invisible, and
thus returned to my shrine, but the shrine was broken down, and
ere any magic could rebuild it one spoke a word before which my
power bowed down and was still. And the Amulet lay there, still
perfect, but enslaved. Then one coming with stones to rebuild
the shrine, dropped a hewn stone on the Amulet as it lay, and one
half was sundered from the other. I had no power to seek for
that which was lost. And there being none to speak the word of
power, I could not rejoin it. So the Amulet lay in the dust of
the desert many thousand years, and at last came a small man, a
conqueror with an army, and after him a crowd of men who sought
to seem wise, and one of these found half the Amulet and brought
it to this land. But none could read the name. So I lay still.
And this man dying and his son after him, the Amulet was sold by
those who came after to a merchant, and from him you bought it,